


Slides

by mutterandmumble



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crush at First Sight, F/F, First Meetings, Fluff, Libraries, Mild Language, One Shot, unedited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 12:21:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20425889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutterandmumble/pseuds/mutterandmumble
Summary: She is wearing an easy sort of confidence alongside a leather jacket that curls around her back and spills down her arms, and Alisa’s mouth has gone completely dry. She swallows once, throat sticking to itself and tongue swollen heavy in her mouth, and offers up the widest smile that she can manage. Then she leans forwards as far as she dares and pushes that smile all the way up to her eyes, because first impressions matter and she feels that this one might just matter more than most.Because she really does love making new friends, but every now and then she wouldn’t mind making a little something more.





	Slides

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this is nonsense. I typed alisae and it autocorrected and then I grew attached. Anyways, this is the second story in a row I’ve written that takes place in a library, and I really have nothing to say about that other than I love libraries. They’re very calming. As for Alisa’s nickname (diminutive?) for Lev, that was pulled straight from the wiki. I assumed that that’s just how she would always refer to him mentally if she uses it while speaking, and that’s the mindset that I carried over here. 
> 
> Anyways this fic is something kind of different for me! Something new! And while I was a little off my game overall (especially with the pacing) I’m content enough with the product. I hope you enjoy!

It is 15:00 on a Saturday afternoon, and Haiba Alisa is very near on her last nerve. She’s been reduced to flicking the tip of her tongue from her mouth, jogging her leg and twisting at the soft fabrics of her cardigan and skirt as boredom eats away at her body and soul, leaving her stupid and empty and breathless and teetering on the edge of sleep as her limbs sprawl loose and wild over the table in front of her and the chair at her back. She’s long grown tired of this- she’s sitting, all alone in the tiny section of the library that’s made of only vending machines and dirty tiled floors, with nothing but her own mind and the hum of the fluorescent lights for company. She feels that by now she must be nearly- if not  _ completely _ \- out of her mind.

Not, of course, that she can bring herself to regret it. She’d been driven to the library by first her need to be the best big sister that she could possibly be, and then her own car as she revved up the engine, settled her hands on the wheel and made sure her little brother put on his seatbelt before she drove him to meet up with some classmates. She does love spending time with Lyovochka, especially when she cranks the radio as high as she can without her eardrums shattering, and the bass pounds in her head and flows to her stomach, and then they sing together with  _ volume  _ and not much else, but she’s been here for ages now! Ages and ages, all alone above the cold tile and on the hard-backed chair and among the big, writhing crowds. 

Now when they had first gotten there Lyovochka _had_ introduced her to his friends, and they’d happily invited her to stay, but Alisa didn’t want to intrude! They were having so much fun already, with their poster spread over the table, and their bunches of markers and pencils falling to the floor, and their loud, loud voices discussing something that she couldn’t quite follow- they were in the middle of a school project, and Alisa couldn’t inflict herself on that no matter how much she enjoys making new friends! She’d feel guilty for years!

So she had politely refused (and the little one with the red hair had wilted, and the less-little one with the brown hair and wide eyes had pouted), pushed her own disappointment down, and then wandered off to try and find something else to do_. _She’s never been one for reading, not really, but she meandered from shelf to shelf, pulling books down and keeping her fingers propped between volumes for when she inevitably grew tired and put them back. She stopped _that_ after a small stint in the romance section that left her giggling a little too loudly at the back of a book and consequently being shot glares from everyone nearby, including and down to the person on the other side of the shelf.

They’d made eye contact through the gaps left by the taken-down books. They had not looked forgiving.

Needless to say, Alisa left that section quickly.

So time had passed. And more time had passed. And time had passed and passed and _passed _until Alisa could hardly remember her own name, until she felt lost and set drifting among a sea of cut-up words and quiet voices and angry, angry library-goers. She was growing listless in manner, tired through-and- through; her fingers were wound tight like springs and her eyes were drifting shut over and over and over again until her skin felt raw and her brain was buckling beneath the complete and utter lack of proper stimulation.

Then in one last-ditch stroke of genius, Alisa, bored half to death and having none of it, had procured a pen and a few sheets of scrap paper from the very nice elderly woman manning the desk (and doing a very good job of it too, between her eagle-eyed glare and warm, melty smile), and then wheedled and twisted and coaxed her way past two large families and three tired students to the one open table left in the walled-off section with the food and the drinks and such. 

That brings her to now. Drawing had worked for a time, keeping her hands occupied and her mind settling into a happy little hum, but as time dragged on and people have come and gone she has found herself tilting and teetering and stumbling back into unrest. She is all alone and dull, pen lying forgotten on the table and slashing across some halfhearted sketches of the shelves and people streaming around her, flowing past her shoulders and tugging at her hair. There’s a bit of a face in one corner, half of a bird’s wing glancing off of a shoulder, something that looks to be the head of a giraffe grafted onto the body of an elephant, but none of it is substantial or even genuine. 

She feels stuck. She feels slow. She’s beginning to wonder if maybe,  _ maybe  _ she’ll never be allowed to leave; if maybe when she goes to grab Lyovochka by the scruff of his neck and tug him out the front doors, their way will be blocked by two great big supernatural forces that stand tall at ten feet and cross their spears over the exit. Or maybe she’ll turn to stone in this chair and the nice lady at the front desk will bring people by to gawk at her- _ See, that’s what happens if you stay for longer than you are welcome! Don’t dawdle children, keep moving, keep moving! _ She’s three more minutes and two beats of inaction away from becoming a museum exhibit! A footnote in a musty old book about unexplained phenomena, the sort that middle-schoolers read during break times and tell their friends all about but never, ever believe!

That’s what’s going to become of Haiba Alisa! She’s going to drift to nothing, and all because she wanted to help her little brother!

But melodramatic as that is, as  _ woeful  _ and  _ mindless  _ and  _ empty  _ as she’s feeling, she’ll remain strong. She’ll persevere. She’ll get herself some Doritos or something from the vending machine, and then she’ll probably feel better. 

Just as she’s decided on a course of action and spent a good two minutes rummaging through her purse before coming up with some cash (all change; she should probably start carrying some bills), there’s a knock on the other side of the table. Alisa starts, letting the change fall from her hands and  _ clink  _ to the bottom of her purse. Slowly she lets her head rise, bobbling like a puppet on a string as her eyes travel  _ up  _ slim fingers and the rough curve of a hand,  _ along  _ the double arch of an arm and  _ over  _ the broad sweep of two shoulders before landing on-

-the  _ hottest  _ woman Alisa’s ever seen.

She’s short- much shorter than Alisa but then most people are- but she carries herself with the airs of someone much, much larger, and when she catches Alisa staring and flicks her a tiny, sharp-toothed grin that sends shivers down her spine, she knows without a doubt that this woman’s demeanor is well deserved. Fought for tooth and nail, with a vicious sort of strength; the sort of thing that’s as much a part of her as the blunt, pale nails she’s flicking against the table, or the languid roll of her neck, or the catlike glint in her eye. She looks every part the rebel too, from the black skinny jeans clinging taut to the curves and muscles of her legs (at which Alisa staunchly does  _ not  _ stare), to the swirling bursts of ink at her collarbone, to the blood-red shirt that’s pulled tight across her stomach but doesn’t quite reach the skin beneath her belly button. When she swings to stand straight again, no longer hunched over the table but still looking at Alisa with her head cocked to the side and her fingers molded to the slow contours of her hip, the fabric hikes up high enough to expose the barest glint of sterling silver against light brown. 

She is wearing an easy sort of confidence alongside a leather jacket that curls around her back and spills down her arms, and Alisa’s mouth has gone completely dry. She swallows once, throat sticking to itself and tongue swollen heavy in her mouth, and offers up the widest smile that she can manage. Then she leans forwards as far as she dares and pushes that smile all the way up to her eyes, because first impressions matter and she feels that this one might just matter more than most.

Because she really does love making new friends, but every now and then she wouldn’t mind making a little something more.

“Hey,” the woman starts, and she speaks warm on the downbeats and rough on the vowels in a way that makes Alisa’s stomach do some funny, funny things, “Sorry to bother you, but this place is pretty fuckin’ crowded and every other table’s full. Do you mind if I sit here for a bit?”

“Go right ahead!” Alisa blurts, and immediately chides herself- much too loud, much too strong! She’s gotta ease up, or else she’s going to scare her off!

But the woman just smiles wider, lips rolling to teeth, and with a sweep of her white-yellow-gold-brown (Alisa can’t  _ decide _ , but it looks very soft _ )  _ hair and a good, decisive nod, she throws herself into the chair across from Alisa’s. There are piercings in her ears too, ones that travel along their edges and hook into each other, and Alisa studiously fixes her eyes on those as the woman settles an arm over the back of her chair and pushes her legs wide to either side. She slouches when she sits, looks very loose, very jumbled, very at-ease, but her eyes are diligent beneath their lids. They are sharp, like her not-quite needle teeth. They are bright.

“Thanks for that,” she says. “ I’m Tanaka. Tanaka Saeko.”

“Haiba Alisa.”

Much, much better. Much more smooth, much more soft. Like soil after rain, like ice crushed to slush.

“Hmmm,” Saeko hums deep in the back of her throat. Her head is tilted just far enough back that the skin pulls tight over the tendons. “That’s pretty.”

The way that she speaks, the slow waver of her voice between words and the crawling  _ implication  _ that ties them all together melds with the heat in Alisa’s breaths, the tightening in her chest, until she’s again restless and shifting in her chair.

“Yours too! Tanaka is a beautiful name!”

“I guess, I guess,” Saeko snorts. She looks Alisa right in the eye- her irises are honey-brown, broken by bits of darker amber and spiderwebbed near-black, her pupils spilled in bright black ink right at their center. “But Saeko’s even better, don’tcha think? Easier to say, rolls off the tongue, however you wanna say it. Tell you what, why don’t you call me that instead? Tanaka makes me feel so  _ old. _ ” 

She groans that last word, throwing her head back and drawing the sounds out long and starting up a slow, steady beat against the tabletop with her fingertips. She’s leaned forwards a bit too, close enough that the already very small table seems to be warping and shrinking and curling at the edges until their foreheads are near bumping. Alisa’s heart starts up its stuttering again, breaking on every other beat and bumbling into her rapidly reddening cheeks. 

“Saeko, then!” she exclaims, and as she speaks she ignores the pleasant hiss of the syllables. “And if I’m going to be calling you Saeko, then you should call me Alisa. To keep things fair.”

Saeko laughs a bit at that, a low, rumbly noise in the back of her throat. “Alright. Alisa it is.”

Alisa swears that for a moment, her mind goes completely and utterly blank; what little coherency she had left has crashed and burned, twisted and screeches into a pile of junkyard metal, and she can’t even bring herself to care.

“So, Alisa. What brings you here?”

It takes a moment (and a horrendous amount of willpower) but Alisa manages to tug herself together enough to at least  _ appear  _ functioning. She rearranges her smile and her skirt, idly takes her pen up between her fingers and then leans her weight into the table.

“My little brother! He had work to do, so I drove him over. I wouldn’t be here otherwise-“ she moves closer, very careful, very concise, and drops her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “-I don’t really like libraries very much. They’re too quiet! I always get so  _ bored _ !”

“Oohhh, I get that,” Saeko laughs. “There’s not usually anything fun in these kinds of places, is there?”

“Not usually,” Alisa agrees, and then in a sudden fit of boldness adds, “but sometimes I get lucky.”

“Oh?” Saeko quirks a brow. “Well. That’s something we have in common, I guess.”

She doesn’t even give Alisa a moment to recover before she’s rocketing headfirst into her next question.

“So do you draw, then?”

Alisa blinks. “Do I draw?”

Saeko reaches closer, closer, and closer still until her fingertips are nearly brushing the edge of Alisa’s sleeve. She tip-taps the corner of Alisa’s paper, skirting the sketchy, feathered edge of the wing and, when Alisa says nothing, letting her hands drip down the curve of the shoulder all the way to where it fades back into cream-colored paper. 

“These are pretty good! So are you like, in school for art, do you do it for fun, anythin’ like that?”

There’s a warm little hitch of pride in Alisa’s chest, grown from the notion that Saeko thinks her work good enough to be professional, but still she has to shake her head. 

“I only draw for fun, right now. I’m taking a bit of a break from school for right now. There’s just so many  _ options _ ! It all sounds so interesting, and I don’t even know how to  _ begin  _ choosing a specific job or area or anything like that! “ She's thrown her arms wide by the end of it, voice creaking upwards in a way that’s wholly inappropriate for a library; but her concern at that has been buried under a haze of excitement, of being spoken of and spoken to. Even the little, wispy and unformed words in the back of her brain, the ones telling her that she’s being  _ too  _ much  _ too  _ fast are easy enough to push aside when Saeko doesn’t shy away from her, not even an inch.

“Oh god, I get that,” she says. “It’s been what, three years since I’ve ended high school and I’m still figuring shit out. But hey, it’s not like I’m in any sorta hurry anyways, ya know?”

“I know, I know,” Alisa agrees. “But what about you, then? Are you reading up on something? Gathering intel?”

“Nothin’ as fun as that,” Saeko snorts. She tips back her chair until she’s balanced precariously on its back legs, bracing herself against the table’s center column. Her shin is pressed to Alisa’s, warmth catching on the fabric of her skirt and seeping into her skin. “I’m here to drop off my kid brother. He’s meeting up with some friends, he said? Sounded like the real close type. They’re doing a project for school, and asked him to help out.”

“Ohh!” Alisa exclaims, propriety and nerves disregarded for a quick second as she claps her hands together and her eyes are lit by the proverbial lightbulb hanging over her head. “Like my Lyovochka! Maybe they’re working together!”

Saeko leans back in her chair again. Alisa, as subtly and cool as she can, mourns the loss of proximity.

“Well what’d you say his name was? Ryuu talks about his friends a  _ ton _ , so if they are working together, I’ve probably heard of him.”

“Lyovochka! Or by most anyone else Lev, I guess. He’s really, really tall-“ she’s sure to gesture, because this is very, very important “-and we look similar, too. He’s very smart! He plays volleyball too, and he’s going to be the ace one day!”

Saeko’s begun nodding as she speaks, is three ways to laughter by the time Alisa’s finished. 

“Oh yeah, Ryuu  _ absolutely  _ knows him. He never mentioned that he had an older sister, though! And god knows that’s the  _ real  _ important thing here.”

Alisa snort-giggles behind her fingers. Saeko looks pleased with herself.

“I’ll have to talk to him about that. He really ought to be talking about me to his friends, especially if they have pretty sisters!”

Saeko breaks into laughter, full, involved, laughter, hands locked over her stomach and loud enough to get others staring laughter.

“Oh, I like you! You’re fun! Hey, hey do you have your phone? You wanna exchange numbers?”

Alisa pushes down the disbelief that’s been threatening to flow through her skin, her eyes, her mouth during this whole interaction and pulls her phone from her bag and brings up the screen for a new contact. The charm knocks against her hand as she does, the sheen of the case catching in the light, and she feels the skin over the bridge of her nose flush even more. She loves that charm to bits (it’s cute!) and the case even more (the colors are pretty, and they match most of her clothes), but surely Saeko must see them as hopelessly childish! Sure she’s not going to go about  _ changing _ , but it’s still embarrassing!

But Saeko doesn’t comment. Saeko smiles and takes the phone- and their fingers brush along the horizontal, papery skin, creased joints and folds of skin smashed into folds of skin until the sparks lacing through Alisa’s bones jump over and through her veins as little static shocks that have her hissing through her teeth. Saeko types in her name and her number, and then Saeko adds a string of emojis that she takes a good thirty seconds to pick out. Saeko smiles when she hands the phone back, and Alisa feels woozy and light-headed.

“There ya go! Now you can text me later if you want.”

Alisa hums happily- very, very happily, like the lights overhead- and meticulously taps out a message right there and then. Because Alisa may have been bored before, but Saeko has shocked her into interest, made her muscles jump like a frog and the hair at the back of her neck stand on end. She’d like to get to know her, at the very least, and she’d like to get to know her  _ better. _

Saeko’s phone buzzes in her pocket. She pulls it out deftly and adds Alisa to her contacts, tongue poking from the side of her mouth as her nose scrunches (and Alisa stubbornly refrains from cooing) and she taps at the screen much harder than is really necessary.

“All set!” she says moments later. Her phone is slipped right back into her pocket, then, and she braces her elbows on the table and inches her chair forwards. “Now they’re probably gonna be a good while longer, so you mind if I stick around for a bit? I could get you a drink or something from one of these?”

She taps the side of a vending machine. And Alisa takes a moment for recollection, for pulling herself well and truly together before she replies.

“That sounds great!”

And she really, really means it.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Please consider leaving a comment if you made it this far!! I love hearing from you guys!!
> 
> In other news, I’m starting my senior year of high school in like five days (!), so production is either going to slow down or speed up a lot. Depends on the school, I guess. The classes, the people, that sort of thing, because on one hand new schools are stressful but on the other my best writing has always been done when I’m supposed to be doing something else.


End file.
